Architektur in Wolfsburg, Germany. Monolith, Solitär, Raumschiff. Das sind die ersten und augenscheinlichsten Assoziationen. Das mächtige, aus Beton gegossene, Science Center Phaeno, hat Zaha Hadid in Wolfsburg realisiert. Harte Kanten, wie Schnitte, beschreiben die Gebäudekonturen so, als wären sie ein Teil oder Segment eines größeren Ganzen. Begibt man sich unter das Gebäude entsteht der Eindruck eines Raumschiffs. Futuristische Fensterluken zeigen nach unten, die dynamischer Formensprache dominiert.
www.phaeno.de
www.zaha-hadid.com

Das Gebäude des dekonstruktivistischen Architekten Frank O. Gehry, MARTa – Herford ist zugleich Museum, Zentrum und Forum.
Der collagenhafte, nach strengen Konstruktionsprinzipien aufgebaute, Charakter verknüpft auseinanderstrebende Bauelemente und realisiert ineinanderfließende Räume.
www.marta-herford.de
www.foga.com

Die von Luiz Ibanez Margalef in Anlehnung an den spanischen Kolonialstil entworfene Siedlung besticht durch einfache Formen und eine klare Gliederung.

Tahiche, Lanzarote. Heute befindet sich die Stiftung im ehemaligen Wohnhaus des Künstlers. Der gesamte Komplex ist von Manrique selbst für die neue Funktion als Museum umgestaltet worden. Das Haus steht auf einem 30.000 m2 großen Grundstück, das sich über einem Lavastrom erstreckt, der von den Vulkanausbrüchen von 1730 bis 1736 stammt. Das Gebäude ist über vulkanischen Blasen errichtet und besteht aus zwei Stockwerken. Die Wohnfläche beträgt 1800 m2, dazu kommen 1200 m2 Terrassen und Garten. Das oberen Stockwerk ist in Anlehnung an die traditionelle Architektur Lanzarotes errichtet. Kombiniert mit modernen Elementen, wie weite Glasflächen und großzügigen Freiräumen. Das untere Stockwerk erstreckt sich über fünf natürliche Vulkanblasen, die durch Höhlengänge miteinander verbunden wurden.
www.fcmanrique.org

Exhibition hall at the Frankfurt Trade Fair (GER)
Architecture: Nicolas Grimshaw
www.grimshaw-architects.com

Das gesamte Gebäude ist in eine gläserne Fassade mit der verspiegelten Aufschrift “lentos kunstmuseum” gehüllt. Sie reflektiert das Licht der Umgebung und zeigt sich je nach Witterung anders.
Die großzügigen Ausstellungsräume mit Tageslichtatmosphäre verzichten in weiten Teilen auf die Verwendung von Kunstlicht.
Architektur: Weber & Hofer
www.weber-hofer.ch
www.lentos.at

Design and Architecture: Vito Hannibal Acconci (USA)
Idea: Robert Punkenhofer (Austria)

Kunsthaus Graz, Austria
Architecture: Spacelab Cook-Fournier

www.archigram.net
www.kunsthausgraz.at

The function of observing and analysing weathersituations transforms the image of a measuring instrument into an architectural scale.
The observation deck stands on three columns, supported by the stabilizing staircase.
The function of the ocular is replaced by a directional loop, that directs the view to significant landmarks and explains how the visual range informs about weather forecasts.

Conception, design, planning, realisation: unit-design
architectural concept: Boris Banozic, dreizueins
Project partner: Arge Wetterpark (unit-design, bb22), consulting architectural concept: Boris Banozic, consulting architectural planning: Jan Schulz (bb22), meteorol. specialist counselling: Deutscher Wetterdienst
www.unit-design.de
www.bb22.net
www.dreizueins.de
www.banozic.com

Individual housing as a spider net creating clearing of a forest
Scenario:
1) Over density of existing forest plantation (trees will be at the right level in 5 years)
3) Netting and Wrapping the trees with a plastic mesh to dig a labyrinth in the branches
4) Including an Stealth indoor 450 m² building, on two floor, plugged and over connected to this labyrinth by huge sliding glass door (7×3,5 meters)
5) The boundaries inside/outside became blur for a porosity sensation and windy refreshing
6) Life behind the indoor extension of the labyrinth, behind the strip curtain ‘’as you want’’, under construction
7) Lost in the neighbourhood (in five years)
Architect: R&Sie(n), Paris / Creative team: François Roche, Stéphanie Lavaux, Jean Navarro avec Nicolas Green
Key dimensions: indoor 450 m², outdoor labyrinth 2000 m²
Client: Urbain and Elisabeth Souriau
www.new-territories.com

Architecture: Kazuyasu Kochi, Kochi Architect’s Studio, Tokyo, Japan
Exterior Form Oriented
There are rice fields in front. The client asked a roof top for a view of rice fields and no need for removing snow from the roof. This building tries to solve those requirements by its form.
If the interior experience are defined by the form of walls and ceilings, it may be applied to the relationship between the outside and the building exterior form. Thus, is it possible to design outside by manipulating the exterior design of the building? And as the result of that. The building could be connected with the outside exceeding its actual size.
www.kkas.net

»Importance of a strong architecture«
Architecture is one of the most powerful weapons on earth. A single building of such design quality can transform a city, company or brand into in one of the world’s most recognisable destinations. When we think of Australia we immediately picture the Sydney Opera House and when we about Paris we capture images of the Eiffel tower. Iconic landmarks of such power in this age are becoming rare commodities. (Sybarite)
www.sybarite-uk.com

Tullin 2005
Saturday the 28th of May was the official opening of Tullinløkka 2005. The exhibition itself, as well as all happenings, seminars and lectures was open for public for 15 weeks during the summer 2005 until September 18th this year. The exhibition was also a celebration of Norway’s 100 years as a free Nation.
‘The Frog’ is representing mmw architects of Norway’s crossing of new borders for inflatable architecture.
Both concerning shape and size this is by far the most challenging project the Oslo based young studio has developed.
‘The green monster’, as it has been called in Norwegian media, is a structure of 15 meters height and total area of 2005 sqm – all inflated space.
The client, Norwegian Museum, is the new strong organisation resulting from the merging of four Norwegian museums focusing on art, architecture and design.
www.mmw.no

Asymptote’s Guggenheim Guadalajara Museum in Mexico projects an iconic architectural presence on a spectacular site. The four sculptural corner building volumes that rise up from the ground plane and the sweeping, undulating surfaces of the museum suspended above create a remarkable space that transitions between the city and the extraordinary expanse of the canyon beyond. In this dynamic public space, visitors can access the diverse public amenities housed in the corner buildings, wander among large-scale sculptures on exhibit or enter the museum interior via escalators set against an extraordinary panorama.
www.asymptote-architecture.com

Margot Krasojeviç´s Harmonic Space is an events platform for music, dance and other performances that do not require seating. There is no specific site for the events platform the structure stands on flat ground. Time sequences and relationships between the virtual and actual are addressed in Harmonic Space. The project uses simulation to understand acoustic patterns, it involves changing characteristics of the performance space redefining a typology, which separates with predictability, hierarchy and a predetermined appropriation. The building precedence is Greek amphitheatre. The Greek amphitheatre is investigated as a non-static environment, virtual forces act upon the theatre in the form of Acoustics. Three squares zone the relationship between stage and audience.
www.decodeine.org
Publication, Monograph
Spatial Pathologies – Floating Realities, Margot Krasojeviç
RIEA.CH Research Institute for Experimental Architecture, Springer Wien New York, 2007
ISSN 1437-7446, ISBN 978-3-211-71533-8
www.spatialpathologies.com

The simple space doesn’t aim at being a piece of art in itself but offers in the first place a practical and affordable place to stay. Rather than minimising size and weight as one would expect designing a mobile home the aim of the architects was to maximise its dimensions and functionality. Despite its mobility the building is big, robust and durable. It consists of one long space that can be subdivided in different interior and exterior spaces. It’s a house to be used in many ways: as a hotelroom, a studio or a hospitable dwelling with a big table, good daylighting and as much privacy as one needs.
www.kortekniestuhlmacher.nl
www.bikvanderpol.net
www.beyondutrecht.nl/index2.php?nav=3&proj_id=3

Having developed a number of temporary architectures and several virtual architectural concepts, the Leonardo Glass Cube is the first permanent building implemented by 3deluxe. The integrative design concept combines architecture, interior design, graphic design and landscape architecture into a complex aesthetic entity.
The open floor plan layout of the atmospheric brandworld offers an integrative linkage of product presentation zones and inspiring work areas. Characteristic design features are the supportless glass façade and an undulating, curved white wall which structures the interior.
www.3deluxe.de

Perched between art and architecture, form and function the »Rucksack House« is a walk-in sculpture with its own spatial quality, a hovering illuminated space that looks like a cross between temporary scaffolding and “minimal sculpture”.
As mobile as a rucksack, this mini-house is intended to be an additional room that, with the help of steel cables, can be suspended from the façade of any residential building and can be taken along when the owners decide to move to a new home.
Nine square meter in size, the suspended live-in box (1,6 to) is built as a welded steel cage with a light birch veneered plywood as an inside cladding. The outside cladding of the Rucksack House is made from exterior grade plywood with an absorbent resin surface and punctuated by Plexiglas inserts. Its overall measurements are 250×360 x 250 cm.

Twenty-six follies designed by the New York and Paris based deconstructivist architect Bernard Tschumi. The red pavilions have different functions, they are landmarks and also pearls defining the landscape “Parc de la Villette”, Paris.
www.tschumi.com
www.villette.com

La Géode is a large metallic sphere, it is an Omnimax theatre in the “Parc de la Villette” at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris, France. Designed by Adrien Fainsilber, opend in 1986.
www.fainsilber.com

The dramatic speed and scale of urbanisation in China has spawned a building frenzy of idiosyncratic towers, massive super-blocks and undefined urban spaces.
By appointing Zaha Hadid Architects as master planners for the residential neighbourhood for 50,000 people, SohoChina is making an important move to reverse this urban trend. The design provides a ‘fluid’ response to the programme that integrates buildings with public spaces and the natural environment, allowing different uses to overlap and activities to interconnect. The building forms themselves are equally dynamic. Towers, courtyards and ‘boomerang’ structures – are distributed across the site, exploiting views and orientation, embracing the open spaces and creating visual and physical connections to surrounding districts.
Hadid and Schumacher’s vision is for a crescendo of clustering buildings that mark the skyline and create a real centre to the urban quarter, providing a clear identity for this new part of Beijing when seen from afar. At ground level, the residential buildings, offices, shops and commercial facilities contain and enclose the fluid open spaces, creating a variety of scale and intimacy for the resident and visitor to the area. The density of development ebbs and flows according to location, contributing to a rich texture of experience as one moves across the neighbourhood, from the lower buildings embracing the landscape to the taller towers at the urban heart of the area.
Developer: Soho China, Beijing | Master plan Architects: Zaha Hadid & Patrik Schumacher, London | Urban Consultant: Ricky Burdett, London | Phase I architects: Zaha Hadid Architects, MVRDV, Rotterdem
www.zaha-hadid.com
www.patrikschumacher.com
www.mvrdv.nl

Redevelopment of »Plaza de la Encarnacion« in Sevilla / Spain

»Metropol Parasol« is the new icon project for Sevilla, – a place of identification and to articulate Sevillas role as one of Spains most fascinating cultural destinations. »Metropol Parasol« explores the potential of the Plaza de la Encarnacion to become the new contemporary urban centre. Its role as a unique urban space within the dense fabric of the medieval inner city of Sevilla allows for a great variety of activities such as memory, leisure and commerce. A highly developed infrastructure helps to activate the square, making it an attractive destination for tourists and locals alike.
The »Metropol Parasol« scheme with its large mushroom like structures offers an archeological site, a farmers market, an elevated plaza, multiple bars and restaurants underneath and inside the parasols, as well as a panorama terrace on the very top of the parasols. Thought of as a light metal structure, the parasols grow out of the archeological excavation site into a contemporary landmark. The columns become prominent points of access to the museum below as well as to the plaza and panorama deck above, defining a unique relationship between the historical and the contemporary city. »Metropol Parasols« mixused character initiates a dynamic development for culture and commerce in the heart of Sevilla.
www.jmayerh.de

»Teardrop Park« / Battery Park, 1999-2006, New York (US), close to Ground Zero.
The park’s physical design take clues from the landscape of the Hudson River Valley, freely bringing pieces of upstate New York to Battery Park City. The Teardrop Park design has a robust naturalism that continues some of the spirit of the upland area of Battery Park City’s South Cove Park, where the craggy stones and multi-stemmed trees create a space of both prospect and refuge. A material language and emphasis on stone and vegetation is extended into Teardrop to form the essence of its material structure. In addition, Teardrop Park has an environmental agenda, giving nature a jump-start to establish itself on the site that never had nature because it is a site composed of fill from the original excavation of the World Trade Center. Additionally we are hoping to reclaim water from the “green machines” of the four “green” apartment buildings nearby to irrigate the park.
www.mvvainc.com

The so-called WATERCUBE associates water as a structural and thematical “leitmotiv” with the square, the primal shape of the house in chinese tradition and mythology.
The entire structure of the watercube is based on a unique lightweight-construction, developed by PTW and CSCEC with ARUP, and derived from the the structure of water in the state of aggregation of FOAM.
Behind the totally randomized appearance hides a strict geometry as can be found in natural systems like crystals, cells and molecular structures – (the most efficient subdivision of 3dimensional space with equally sized cells. —> structure report)
By applying this novel material and technology the transparency and the appearing randomness is transposed into the inner and outer skins of ETFE cushions.
Unlike traditional stadium structures with gigantic columns and beams, cables and backspans, to which a facade system is applied, in the watercube design the architectural space, structure and facade are one and the same element.
Conceptually the square box and the interior spaces are carved out of an undefined cluster of foam bubbles, symbolizing a condition of nature that is transformed into a condition of culture.
The appearance of the aquatic centre is therefore a “cube of water molecules” – the WATERCUBE.
In combination with the main stadium by Herzog de Meuron, a duality between fire and water, male and female, Yin and Yang is being created with all its associated tensions/attractions.
www.ptw.com.au
www.cscec.com.cn
www.arup.com

Heidi Weber Pavilion inauguration 1967
The “parasol roof”, common to other Le Corbusier buildings is very particular here: a metallic structure composed of two square surfaces. With container volumes underneath. The modularity of these volumes is decomposed through “modulor” subdivisions and underlined with different colors or glass surfaces.
www.lecorbusier-center.com

Mazama, WA, USA – A 1,000 square-foot weekend cabin, basically a steel box on stilts, can be completely shuttered when the owner is away. Situated near a river in a floodplain, the 20’ x 20’ square footprint rises three stories and is topped by the living room/kitchen. Large, 10’ x 18’ steel shutters can be closed simultaneously using a hand crank.
www.oskaarchitects.com

THEVERYMANY is a design studio and collaborative research forum engaging the field of architecture via encoded and explicit processes. »The very many« is a simple assembly of three words : “definite article” (ie Explicit) + “adjective-modifier” (ie Variables) + “plural” (ie Multiplicity). Combined as a motto, it addresses contemporary cultures as complex and intricate systems…
Marc Fornes and Skyllar Tibbits updated a work in progress on »Aperiodic Vertebrae v2.0« for NODE08.
THEVERYMANY has been set up based on a continuum research on explicit and encoded protocols within design – the first implicit consequence of its core is to let traces; those traces – often under the format of simple text files – allow to exactly reproduce or alter the model, eventually share axioms… but it somehow also requires to admit and assume those traces, if so, one can learn from mistakes, errors and/or tolerances of previous stages or generation based on feed back…
www.theverymany.net

»Jack in the box« is a non-profit association for the development and testing of innovative ideas to promote employment.
Within the Passagen 2008 in Cologne, they presented the »Koelnerbox«. The project represents the main idea of »Jack in the box«: Old, unused, damaged or defective products are transformed into new objects with new functions and a new value. The »Koelnerbox« focuses on the upcycling of an old cargo container into a new, well designed office.
www.koelnerbox.de
www.koelnerbox.de/architekten

The objective of this project is to be able to move into the rainforest and have an experience of it – with as little impact as possible. The spheres use the trees around them for a foundation, thus eliminating the footprint on the ground. The web of rope that connects them to the forest mirrors our connectedness to the eco system we live in. The web of rope, with many soft attachments to the trees, also secures the spheres aloft.
The ropes are all stretchy and the main support comes from near vertical attachments to the trees. This keeps the load in column, down the trunks of the trees, enabling them to move unrestricted. It also keeps the sphere relatively steady when the wind blows and the treetops move a lot.
Access is provided via a spiral staircase and short suspension bridge that leads out to the sphere. The stairway is a helix, which is also suspended from the tree. Nothing penetrates the trees anywhere. Everything attaches by brackets and lines that are blocked out from the trees, to prevent girdling. A sphere can be placed in a forest setting in 3 or 4 days and completely removed in 1. A crew of 3 people is normally used to position and rig a sphere. Tom
www.freespiritspheres.com

The train station “Gare de Strasbourg”, France, was constructed from the Berlin architect Johann Jacobsthal and dedicated in 1883 the first time. Today the distance Strasbourg-Paris was shrinked to 1 hour and 50 minutes, cause of the new line TGV-EST. The architect Jean-Marie Duthilleul designed the new glass facade, which was completed and dedicated in 2007, to meet the new requirements. Now the old facade has its own shelter and display dome, the TGV-station has its suitable modern jewel-case.
The lawn vis-à-vis the main entrance, Place de la Gare, is a cool place to rest and enjoy the two-in-one buildung. The highlights are the moving gradient of the transparancy and the funny reflections of the shaped and perforated glass.

The folded structure is an architectural experiment using only plastics as construction material. This prototype of a self-supporting building skin is made from just 19 mm thick translucent polycarbonate sandwich panels, arranged in a radial array that is divided into eight segments. The folded geometry in combination with the structural connection of the edges guarantees the pavilion’s structural stability. The individual panels of this high-end lightweight structure are partly glued together and partly joined with an innovative detachable technology to facilitate transport and installation.
Architect, fabrication and construction: State Academy of Arts and Design Stuttgart, Class for Structural Design: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Stephan Engelsmann, Dipl.-Ing. Valerie Spalding, students Melanie Fischer and Gerlind Baloghy. For fabrication and construction supported by students Annette Bohr, Franciska Ganns, Alexander Merkel and Raoul Ruoff.
Structural engineers: Engelsmann Peters Beratende Ingenieure GmbH, Stuttgart.
Sponsoring: ThyssenKrupp AG, Stuttgarter Studentenwerk e.V., Design Composite GmbH
www.ke.abk-stuttgart.de

urban landscapes
www.o-j-o.com